


Seven Wonders

by prodigy



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Post-Canon, Sadomasochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 04:07:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11372250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/pseuds/prodigy
Summary: Kirei keeps Gilgamesh, to the best of his ability.





	Seven Wonders

He expended his prana healing him, after, and he took him to the aquarium in Osaka. Fuyuki had one too, not shabby for the city's size, but Kirei had studied a magazine spread of Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan and had found it impressive. He deemed it a decent introduction to the genre for the King of Heroes, short of dragging him out to Okinawa. Kirei was always looking at magazines for this sort of thing. He didn't have many interesting childhood memories to draw upon.

Gilgamesh was quiet and sullen on the train; he periodically bent his fingers and glanced sideways at Kirei, and then back out the window, his earrings moving with the sharp motion of his head. He'd refused any snacks in the station, which meant he was hungry, which meant he was testy. He was prepared to be unimpressed.

When they disembarked and took the stairs in the station, Kirei offered Gilgamesh his arm to help him: with a benevolent, meaningful smile. Gilgamesh glowered and took it. Together they made their transfer and Kirei bought their aquarium tickets; when he turned round he discovered he was alone. But a Master had a hard time truly misplacing his Servant. He found Gilgamesh at a taiyaki vendor; "I want the chocolate, Kotomine," he said when Kirei came up to him, his first words on the excursion.

He lapsed into silence again when he followed Kirei into the aquarium. There he peered at the glowing jellies, the fronds of the lionfish; the huge sharks making their circuits; he splayed out his hand against the glass separating him from an exhibit of bioluminescent plankton, and again over a towering kelp forest, where they watched a diver feed a group of seals. The Grail had given Gilgamesh limited context from which to operate in the modern world, as Kirei understood it; but not this.

The moue had vanished from Gilgamesh's face: the bright irises of his eyes were dilated wide. He didn't seem to notice as a group of foreign children clustered around him, anxious for the view he was getting of the rustling green habitat. He was watching the lazy trajectory of a seal.

"Perhaps," said Kirei aloud, "the modern world still has something to offer the King of Heroes...?"

Gilgamesh didn't answer him immediately, and Kirei assumed he was still not on speaking terms with him. But then he seemed to remember his neglected taiyaki, which he had given Kirei to hold, and held out his hand for it; "No," he said.

"No?"

"No," said Gilgamesh. "These things were always in the world. They're not your creation. All you've done has been to install some glass." He cupped his hand; Kirei reached out and touched his fingertips, briefly. But he was disappointed: not a flinch or shiver, just a shrug of one shoulder and, "Give me my food."

* * *

That Gilgamesh did not find modern structures beautiful was no surprise to Kirei: he had once been shown a television special on the Hagia Sophia and pronounced it 'pretty,' and demanded that Kirei take him there tomorrow, as if this were likely. Otherwise the architectural accomplishments of the past few millennia did not impress him. He held grander possessions beyond Babylon's Gate, he said, though he was chronically unspecific on the matter; marvels of glass and engineering failed to astonish him. Kirei supposed this was because Gilgamesh did not understand the engineering. Neither did Kirei, by and large--but unlike Gilgamesh, he was so accustomed to being underwhelmed by beauty that he had long since begun to suspect he was blind to it.

Kirei knew beauty the way he knew pleasure, or humor: concentrated in the mortal form of his Servant, in one of the jewel-red tones of his eyes, so close to the color of his blood. Of the three things, Gilgamesh's sense of humor was the most elusive: he once asked, of Fuyuki Church, "Do you _like_ this building?" and laughed outright when Kirei said he didn't know. "Well, _I_ like it," Gilgamesh said.

"Why?" Kirei often found himself returning to this question. He'd been a rather incurious man, prior to the War; as he understood it, Gilgamesh still found him aggravatingly incurious, but his interest was piqued by more things now.

"Oh, it's ugly. It doesn't mean anything to me." Gilgamesh stretched his arms out across the back of a pew. He was always taking up more space than he needed. "But it used to mean something to you. Didn't it?"

Kirei was not sure he had ever spent as much time around one person as he did around his Servant now, and perhaps that was why he was such a puzzle to Kirei: perhaps all people had as many small paradoxical dimensions curled up inside of themselves at a subatomic level, like string theorists liked to say. But Kirei doubted it. The truth was that Kirei's life was dull. Aside from administrative work and the preparation of his homilies, he had little to do. He didn't mind the intrusion upon his time, because there was nothing to intrude upon.

"You mean that you didn't have a life before this," Gilgamesh interpreted when Kirei tried to express this to him. "Well, I knew that. I remember you. You were dreadful."

"You were the one who took interest in me," came Kirei's mild reminder.

"It falls upon the foresight of a king," said Gilgamesh, "to see the palace before having the foundations laid."

"You don't like palaces."

Gilgamesh frowned. "You wouldn't understand," he said, and Kirei supposed he didn't.

But Kirei supposed Gilgamesh was right: Fuyuki Church still meant something to him. Places of worship did in general. Gilgamesh demanded they break into a cathedral in Nagoya after hours, and sat on the altar and wrapped his legs around Kirei: something he did for Kirei's benefit, Kirei realized, though he did not understand why. He fucked Gilgamesh there anyway, which felt a little perfunctory and immature after the fact, but in the moment he was absorbed in Gilgamesh's expression: delighted with himself, thrilled, watching Kirei's eyes, and he said under his breath when Kirei was inside of him, "Hurry up. You're not usually so slow."

He was a crude, ancient creature, Kirei thought. He was a brat. There was nothing really impressive about him, beyond his gifts; no intricacies of his mind or soul. Yet here they were. Here Kirei was. He turned Gilgamesh over and ground his face into the altar. He thought he could remember the sound of the choir.

* * *

Gilgamesh was an expensive houseguest, though he had no need to be. He was always eating up money and prana, one or the other. He demanded to be kept in state. Kirei humored him sometimes, though it pleased him not to: it pleased him to see Gilgamesh come crawling for either, proud and angry and petulant and weak, aching for mana or waiting for yen to be counted out from Kirei's hand so he could spend it. Sometimes he allowed Gilgamesh the luxury of a credit card and a long leash; but he was no fool, and knew well the consequences to life and wallet if he permitted that for long. That made it all sound so pragmatic. Kirei was aware his decisionmaking regarding Gilgamesh had long since abandoned the pragmatic.

Kirei liked surprise. Rather, he liked the way Gilgamesh looked when he was surprised: and he was so easily surprised by little things, even when he shouldn't have been. The Osaka Aquarium. Kirei breaking his fingers, before that--and why that should've surprised him, Kirei had no idea. He'd screamed outright. His pain threshold was high--high _now_ , Kirei thought proudly--but not high enough that his breath didn't seize when Kirei made him touch him with his shattered grip, then, that he didn't whimper. But he'd done it: resolutely, whitefaced, with disgust, he'd done it. Kirei thought he could never be more proud of him. But then again, he was always thinking that at the time.

The first time Kirei had fucked him, it had been in the room with Tokiomi. With Tokiomi's corpse, Kirei supposed, not 'with Tokiomi': he just liked to think of it as _with Tokiomi_ , because it gratified an itch. An itch left unscratched--one he thought Gilgamesh shared, though the one time he had brought it up Gilgamesh had scoffed, _that ridiculous man? You still think of him?_ That didn't mean anything. Gilgamesh was always saying things.

Afterwards Gilgamesh had been breathless and boneless underneath him; and he'd said without getting up--as if he could get up-- _Well? Was it everything you thought it would be? --Master?_

That was the first time Gilgamesh had called him that: he rarely did, always laden with irony. Bitterness. Kirei thought of things like that in fragments. He didn't know what he felt about them. He didn't, generally, know what he felt.

When they got back from Osaka, Kirei used Gilgamesh like an afterthought--roughly, bent over his desk, with his arm wrenched over Gilgamesh's mouth. He knew Gilgamesh didn't like it. He knew it also made Gilgamesh cry out, and not all in pain. Such was the contradiction of his nature; sometimes Kirei would stroke his hair after and tell him, soothing, _It's all right. I know the way you are. I know you._ But sometimes he wondered if it was too far.

After Osaka, Gilgamesh struggled to his feet and sat on the desk: _I want to go to the one in Okinawa_ , he pronounced, legs crossed.

Kirei was startled that he remembered. His expression must have said so, because Gilgamesh rolled his eyes and said, _It has a **whale shark.**_ There was blood on his legs. His hands were still shaking when he reached through the Gates of Babylon and poured himself a drink.

* * *

He didn't always leave Gilgamesh in shape to do much of anything. When he could get away with it, Kirei liked not to heal him. Gilgamesh was a sturdy thing, after all, and fucking him again when he was already sore and bloodied sometimes wrung reactions out of him that the first time didn't. "This is what you're here for," Kirei told him matter-of-factly; "Stop crying. You have nothing better to do with your time." The first time he said something like that, Gilgamesh bit him--and paid for it, of course, but Kirei thought he'd worn him down since. 

He still treasured the little rebellions. Sometimes Gilgamesh even had the power to say things that still interested him: "Why are you _like_ this?" he hissed once, at once pained and peevish, when Kirei flipped him over and took him without a gesture to preparation. Kirei thought about that for a while. He didn't have an answer. He was like this, he supposed, because Gilgamesh had seen it in him; it occurred to him that this would have been a good thing to say in the moment. However, two days had passed and the time was gone. It would only be a non sequitur, which Gilgamesh never liked unless he was the one positing them.

There were many things Gilgamesh loathed, which was to say, there were many things Gilgamesh responded to; he disliked being naked on his knees when Kirei hadn't taken off any of his clothes, he disliked having anything put inside of him that wasn't a flesh-and-blood part of Kotomine Kirei. This extended to a long list of things: toys, wine bottles, the hilts of Kirei's knives (handled with care). The last had frightened him, which woke an unusual appetite in Kirei; after he was done with Gilgamesh he kissed him on the tip of his nose.

He'd left him in such a state on the waterfront one night in Fuyuki. Fucking in public was more for Gilgamesh than for Kirei; to Kirei's limited understanding, Gilgamesh liked being taken like a prize in any setting that pleased him, laid out like a feast. Kirei's tastes ran more to the padded, outfitted basement, to hotel rooms, to places where screams would be unheard or ignored.

He still indulged Gilgamesh sometimes; and when he was done, for his own amusement, he buttoned himself up and let Gilgamesh struggle to piece his clothing back together.

That was when he encountered the woman. She was wearing a long overcoat, and when she crossed his path he automatically stepped in front of Gilgamesh: putting his hands up, readying an excuse. Not that he really had an excuse ready. He had his cassock on, which made everything infinitely more damning. "Madam--" he said.

She raised her hands: and her circuits lit up like a bonfire. "Kotomine Kirei," she said in triumph. "I found you."

Later he would realize she'd come from the Clock Tower, once, and he and Gilgamesh had made a narrow escape. Right now he only knew that she was a mage, more powerful than him, and that this would not be easy. He was unarmed. Not that he needed to be armed, exactly, but--it would have made things simpler. He raised his hands.

Behind him he thought he heard something; but he heard nothing, of course, just the silent dust-shimmer of Gilgamesh's armor, and then the thousand eyes of the Gates of Babylon. The mage stared like she was looking upon the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Then two swords pierced her; and Kirei turned to glance at his Servant.

Gilgamesh's arms were folded and armored. He stood exceptionally still; the Gates collapsed again behind him.

When Kirei opened his mouth to say something Gilgamesh said, "This is what I'm here for. I have nothing better to do with my time." Kirei turned to scoop up the body over one shoulder, and Gilgamesh staggered to the ground again, naked and wet. When Kirei offered him his free hand, he looked contemptuous.

* * *

No one came looking for the mage: or if they did, they didn't come to the church. Whatever she'd been expecting from Kirei, it hadn't been a Servant outside of a Grail War. It took a few months to be certain of that, however, and during that time Kirei found himself--atypically--nervous. Gilgamesh wasn't, of course; but then again, Gilgamesh had all the sense God had given a common dandelion, which accounted for most of his valor. Not a dandelion. Something prettier, Kirei supposed. In any case, Gilgamesh was amused at Kirei's worries: "What are they going to do?" he queried. "Arrest us? Arrest _me_?"

Kirei did not say that that was precisely what they might do. It would've fallen on deaf ears. He knew better than to try to convince Gilgamesh to apply normal consequences to himself, even in the hypothetical.

Meanwhile, Gilgamesh was bored. Gilgamesh was drunk, most of the time, or tipsy at least: it rendered him languid and needy, of food, of amusement--of sex, when he felt like it, and sleep when he didn't. Kirei had long suspected that for Gilgamesh, desire and desire for attention were bound up in his interest in Kirei. Affection and companionship too, Kirei imagined--things he wasn't sure he properly understood, but recognized in other people, and to a lesser degree, himself. Doubtless Gilgamesh was too proud to demand it direct: so he climbed into Kirei's lap instead, or his bed. Usually Kirei let him.

He did not always let him go with his pride. Sometimes he did--he thought unevenness was key, crucial that Gilgamesh didn't become dull and jaded like some kind of Matou plaything. That was not what either of them wanted.

He was kissing him; Gilgamesh was squirming, increasingly, because he knew that the longer Kirei drew this part out the more likely he had something in mind. And in fact, he did. After letting up for breath Kirei touched foreheads with Gilgamesh and said, "Bring me an arrow, King of Heroes."

Gilgamesh blanched. The anticipation, Kirei thought, was really something: not a full half of the experience, but a good section. He turned his face away.

"Gilgamesh," said Kirei with a note of warning.

Gilgamesh opened his eyes and glared at him--he really did have a beautiful, wine-red glare, when he chose to deploy it--and then silently reached through the Gate. "Very good. Be still and quiet, and I won't hurt you as much," Kirei lied, and bent down over him.

He was neither still nor quiet. He tried to be, and that was lovely, but he broke quickly; there was blood, inside and outside of him, and it came fast. Kirei had him on his belly, but he looked over his shoulder and saw the blood on his legs and that snapped something within him that the pain hadn't--and he screamed, again, and finally begged Kirei to stop. He didn't stop him, or try. He was marvelous, Kirei thought; there were no words for the kind of Servant he was. He was slippery and white by the time Kirei forced his cock inside of him, and before long Kirei's hips and stomach were covered with Gilgamesh's blood; ("You're so wet," said Kirei wonderingly; "See--I can fit a finger--you're very good.")

Clinically, he didn't know exactly how much blood Gilgamesh had to lose. Kirei knew the limits of a man of Gilgamesh's size and physical age: but he was no longer a man, precisely, and he was not that age. He was seized by the reckless and uncharacteristic urge to push it; to watch the color drain away from Gilgamesh's face and extremities, to see him struggle to hold himself up on his elbows and knees still, and shake, and fail and collapse: to hear his interchanged pleas and threats dissolve into incoherency.

He had to heal him eventually, and he did. Kirei held him in his arms for a while after that and tried to consider the sheets. They'd have to be burned. But his mind kept wandering.

He found, to his surprise, that he was shaking as well.

Gilgamesh sat up. This was impressive, but he was always summoning from a well of strength within himself at times like this: that unassailable pride of his. He was still a grey-white color, and still trembling out of control, but he supported himself; and this time, he leaned forward just enough to touch Kirei. He held out his hand; Kirei took it, head bowed, and he kissed Kirei on the forehead.

* * *

There were others. Of course there were others: in the theater of Kirei's mind, anyway, and wherever else he kept his fantasies. There was Emiya--his broken, unbreakable Emiya, and Emiya's little boy-child. There was Tokiomi's daughter, inasmuch as Kirei remembered her. But mostly there was Emiya.

Gilgamesh was jealous. Hypocritically so. Maybe not hypocritically, in practice: the nature of his arrangement with Kirei, as Kirei liked to put it, meant that he spent the vast majority of his time caged and alone, and almost none of it left to his own devices outside, and never freed. Kirei paid little mind to his jealousy, which was too prideful to name itself. If anything he enjoyed it. Sometimes Kirei took pleasure in thinking of Emiya when he fucked Gilgamesh, and letting his eyes unfocus so that Gilgamesh would know.

As for Gilgamesh's own distractions, they were many and fleeting. His eyes frequently followed a woman or a handsome man, unashamed of himself, and Kirei knew it wasn't only to spite his keeper. There was a part of Kirei that imagined he'd let Gilgamesh pursue his interests, if it were safe and if Gilgamesh could be trusted with the general civilian population, which he could not. Then again, he supposed it was easy to fancy that when it was unlikely to come up.

What never came up was Gilgamesh's friend. Kirei made his first mistake regarding that early on when he referred to Iskandar or Arturia as Gilgamesh's _little friends_ , and was sharply corrected: Gilgamesh did not have 'little friends,' it was clarified. Gilgamesh had only one friend, and he was gone.

Naturally Kirei took an interest.

It took him a remarkably long time to consult the Epic of Gilgamesh. It did occur to him that Gilgamesh would probably find this insulting. Regardless, he did not do so in Gilgamesh's company; he sought out a decent translation and perused it on his own time, while his Servant was sleeping.

"If we have another Grail War," said Gilgamesh when he was drunk and contrary, on his back with his knees hitched up; "maybe I'll find _Emiya_ again."

He almost never named him. Kirei paused, took note, and then pulled Gilgamesh's knee up over his shoulder; "Maybe you will," he said neutrally.

"Maybe I'll find him," Gilgamesh winced when Kirei shoved his hips into him, and strained reflexively to get away--but there was a malicious glimmer in his eyes. "And maybe I'll go to bed with him."

Years had passed, and he was still young, still tight on the outside and inside. Kirei supposed he'd never grow up, and imagined this explained a great deal about the state of Uruk once upon a time. "Will you?" he said.

"Yes!" Gilgamesh sounded pleased with himself.

Kirei leaned in: "Maybe I'll summon your friend," he said.

Gilgamesh froze. He seized up a little, which felt good for Kirei; when he spoke again it was taut and wary. "You can summon whoever you like," he said. He was an atrocious liar. "You're a mage."

Kirei fucked him while he was still riding high on that spine of fright; he felt bony and uncomfortable as a result, digging the pads of his fingers into Kirei's shoulders, and Kirei relished his displeasure. It got him off sooner than usual. Despite everything, Gilgamesh was hard, and Kirei considered having mercy and finishing him off; but he looked at Gilgamesh's face, at his scrunched-up eyes, and instead said: "Who do you belong to, Gilgamesh?"

"I don't belong to anyone," said Gilgamesh through his teeth.

"Is that so?"

Gilgamesh ground his teeth together, and squirmed underneath Kirei--and eventually came up with, "You're my Master. You can do what you like with me or anyone else." And he said: "Please don't summon my friend."

"Why not?" Kirei felt a glint of cruelty. "Wouldn't you like to see him again?"

" _Please_ ," said Gilgamesh; and Kirei supposed he had his answer.

* * *

What puzzled Kirei the most was the nights when he didn't order Gilgamesh to his bed, and Gilgamesh wasn't demanding anything, but he'd turn up there anyway: just hop in and curl himself up against Kirei's spine like a dog or a cat, naked and uninterested, and fall asleep there. He supposed he understood on some level. But like many other things about the King of Heroes, he found it profoundly foreign to his life as he knew it.

Other times Gilgamesh would sit on the roof in his silly schoolboy clothes and look at the stars; and when Kirei asked him what he was looking for, he would brush him off, "What is there to look for? It's the sky. It's pretty to look at."

Over time Kirei started to realize that everything that was strange to Gilgamesh was a little alienating--and that everything was strange to him, including the light pollution in the sky. Kirei climbed up to sit with him, once. "Not everything we've added to the world has been beneficial," he mused.

Gilgamesh looked at him like he was crazy. "You've ruined most things," he said. "I'd be hard-pressed to name anything of value you _have_ added."

"Taiyaki," said Kirei with a smile.

"Taiyaki," Gilgamesh granted, grudging.

"And public transit."

"No," said Gilgamesh. Kirei ruffled his hair, and Gilgamesh looked away at the sky, to a field of vision that didn't encompass Kotomine Kirei.

There were times when Kirei pondered doing things that were silly. There were times when he considered doing things that were incredibly rash. They generally concerned Gilgamesh, nowadays; strangely Gilgamesh seemed to have some sense of it, because out of the blue when Kirei was cleaning the dishes (Gilgamesh had never cleaned the dishes) he might say something like, "You'll never be rid of me, you know. I told you."

Kirei would look up: and look upon something he considered incomprehensible. So he would just shake his head and go on cleaning.

He took Gilgamesh to Okinawa eventually. It was a long series of trains, and then a ferry--though Gilgamesh had stood at the ferry railing and scattered the birds with his hands, shouting, and Kirei had felt uncertain--and tickets again, and Gilgamesh wandering off again, until finally they were standing in front of the whale shark enclosure. Kirei did not understand why this would be of interest to someone from the ancient world, but stood and waited for Gilgamesh to finish pressing his fingers to the glass again and trying in vain to get the fish's attention. While he did so, Kirei mused and, finally, took Gilgamesh's hand.

Gilgamesh didn't curl his fingers around Kirei's, but he didn't snatch them away, either. Finally the fish turned towards them in its endless circle, and he looked at it: his reflection wasn't wide-eyed this time, but furrowed and remote. "Come on," he said, losing interest suddenly; "I want to look at the jellies." And he detached his hand and raced on ahead, and Kirei watched him go.


End file.
